Most backup plugins ask you to trust a third-party service with a copy of your entire site. Gutenback skips that step: it connects directly to your own Google account, using OAuth credentials only you control, and uploads backups straight to a folder in your own Drive. Nothing passes through a Guten Haus server.
A pure-PHP database dump
A lot of backup plugins shell out to mysqldump. Many shared hosts disable that outright, which quietly breaks the backup without always saying so. Gutenback writes its dump in pure PHP against $wpdb instead, so it works on hosts that lock exec() down.
The whole site, not just uploads
Each backup zips wp-content — themes, plugins, and uploads — plus wp-config.php and .htaccess. Several competitors’ free tiers skip those last two, which means their “backup” cannot actually rebuild a working site on its own. Gutenback’s can.
Restore that actually handles migration
Restoring a backup onto a different domain rewrites the URLs baked into the database automatically, using a serialization-safe search-replace so it does not corrupt plugin settings stored as PHP arrays. If the destination site uses a different database table prefix, Gutenback rewrites that too.
One thing worth knowing up front: leaving the Google Cloud OAuth app in “Testing” status causes the connection to silently expire after 7 days. Publish it to “In production” once things are working, and reconnecting will not be a recurring chore.
Get started
Gutenback is free. Install it, open Guten Backup in wp-admin, and follow the five-step wizard to connect your own Google Drive.
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